


sever

by Wildehack (tyleet)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 07:50:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19194733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: Gertrude stops Jon in the hallway and tells him he can go.





	sever

**Author's Note:**

> scavengersigil asked for "Maybe something about Jon being allied with a non-Beholding entity? Whether him being drawn towards a different power or having always been allied with them, or maybe a roleswap with one of the other avatars?"

Jon is fired from his job the same day they take the head of the Institute away on suspicion of having committed murder.   
  
Jon wouldn’t have thought the job performance of a mere researcher would be of paramount concern to the powers that be while the Institute is swarming with uniformed officers, but the police are in fact still in the building and taking people’s statements when Gertrude Robinson stops Jon in the hallway and informs him he can go.   
  
”Go–-?” he asks, wondering if she just means that he can leave the building.   
  
”Mm,” she says, a distant, almost sly smile on her face. “And don’t come back, I’m afraid. We no longer have any use for you.”   
  
Jon is shocked into a brief laugh. “I don’t even report to you,” he says. Although–-who _does_  he report to now, with Elias arrested for murder?   
  
”Not anymore,” Gertrude says with satisfaction, and somehow Jon doesn’t even need to check with HR: he feels abruptly cut off, like a cord tied somewhere important inside him has gone taut and then snapped.   
  
Some of this must show on his face, because Gertrude gives him a patronizing little smile and says “Buck up. You might even survive separation, if you’re clever about it,” and Jon feels too strange to ask her what she means.   
  
He goes home to the flat he hadn’t even realized he’s seen less and less of over the months since his first interview with Elias and collapses into bed. He stays there for three days, only leaving to get food, hardly understanding his own exhaustion. It was just a job, wasn’t it? It’s not like it’ll do Jon’s academic career any benefit to be associated with a disgraced institute, anyway, and it’s not like he was particularly close with his coworkers, and the severance will see him through a few months of job-search, so-–why does he feel  _bereft_? Like he’s losing-–some _one_ rather than some _thing_. 

After three days he finally drags himself out of his flat, mostly because he’s run out of food.   
  
It feels even worse out in the world, where there are other people-–so many sets of eyes, and none of them looking at him. Jon feels painfully, almost terrifyingly alone, and he doesn’t know why. He thinks vaguely that he should make an appointment with a counselor, that maybe this is-–panic, or anxiety, or–something a counselor could help with.   
  
For the next month it feels like he’s running a high fever, although he’s not–he’s checked. But he can’t focus, can barely eat, can’t tolerate people, shudders at the idea of being alone in the dark, and he’s seeing things. Strange things. There are spiders where he’s never seen spiders before-–in his messenger bag, crouched in the pocket of his coat, knuckled between the laces of his shoes. A man with a strange scar on his face called to Jon from a bookshop once, and then laughed oddly when Jon kept walking. Every night when Jon leaves the flat, he’ll come across the yellow glow of an almost empty cafe, a girl sat by herself in the window, alone as an Edward Hopper painting. No matter which café, no matter what route he walks down. The cup in her hands is always smoking-–not steaming, _smoking_. There are always things moving in the shadows these days, wriggling and awful and never there when he looks at them dead on. He thinks once in the Tube he saw a door where there shouldn’t be a door, although he didn’t go to investigate the knocking.   
  
He’s too tired, he thinks, to be tempted. He doesn’t know why he feels certain he is being tempted, but that’s worrisome, too.   
  
The worst part, though, are the dreams. 

Every night he dreams about Elias Bouchard.  
  
Not….good dreams. Dreams about his former boss in prison, mostly, acting like Jon isn’t even there, but they fill him with dread. Every once in a while he’ll dream about Elias somewhere else-–walking through a horrible endless cemetery, fingers trailing along the tombstones, or Elias drowning in a vast deep water. The common thread is that Elias never looks at him, and in every dream that’s all Jon wants, hungers desperately and frighteningly for it, Elias’s eyes on his.   
  
Whenever Jon wakes up, chest aching with loneliness, he’ll wonder if the dreams mean he’s secretly been harboring feelings for a murderer, and that’s what this horrible month is all about–but that makes no sense. He hadn’t thought much about Elias at all when he did work for the Institute. The most he’d ever interacted with Elias after the hiring interview was a polite hello in the break room, and of course the yearly review, which no one sane looked forward to. And that’s not–how Jon works, anyway.   
  
At the end of the month, Jon dreams about Elias putting out his own eyes with a fountain pen. Elias turns to him finally, dark ink sliding down his face instead of blood, and says mildly: “I think that’s enough, don’t you?”   
  
When Jon wakes up, it’s to a knock at the door.   
  
He stumbles out of bed and halfway into a dressing gown before he answers it, and only realizes once the door is swinging open that it’s still dark out. It’s the middle of the night.   
  
He hasn’t undone the chain lock. The door jerks open a few inches and then stops.   
  
Jon doesn’t move, and the darkness on the other side of the door is complete–he can’t see anything at all.   
  
”You have to choose someone,” a voice informs him. Soft, male, reasonable. “And I think really we have the best claim.”   
  
Jon swallows, but his throat is dry. “What claim is that?”   
  
”Well,” the voice says, and something about it makes Jon think its owner is smiling. “Aren’t you lonely, Jon?”   
  
Jon opens his mouth to say  _I don’t know what you’re talking about_ , or  _Leave me alone,_  or  _I’m calling the police_ , but what he says instead is, haltingly: “I am-–no longer–-beheld.”   
  
”Mm,” the voice says. “The Magnus Archives burned down tonight. Nothing left of them but ash. All that knowledge lost. Did you know?”   
  
Jon thinks he’s going to be sick. He didn’t know. “Then what do you want with me?” he manages.   
  
”Oh,” the voice says. “I’m going to offer you a job. Won’t you open the door?” 

Jon thinks of the archives, lost to dust and ash, and of Elias blinded, and of Gertrude Robinson looking at him with distant satisfaction. He thinks of _A Guest For Mr. Spider_ , of how he never did learn anything more about Jurgen Leitner. He thinks about being seen, and finds his hand on the door chain without really thinking about it.   
  
”What kind of a job?” Jon asks finally. 

**Author's Note:**

> wildehacked@tumblr.com is still where i live. after all this time.
> 
> reblog there if you want: https://wildehacked.tumblr.com/post/185393662600/maybe-something-about-jon-being-allied-with-a


End file.
